Four Emotional Leadership Domains

I am re-reading Primal Leadership after spending some time thinking about the role of empathy in the various areas of my life and work.  You can find the most recent edition at Amazon in hard copy and electronic editions.

http://www.amazon.com/Primal-Leadership-New-Preface-Authors/dp/1422168034

Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee build on Goleman's work in emotional intelligence and expand that to leadership.  While the conversation and example are directed to for-profit businesses, the insights are directly applicable to life in the church and other nonprofits.

The authors describe four domains of emotional intelligence and competencies related to those domains:

• self-awareness
• self-management
• social awareness, and
• relationship management.

Those domains are listed in order of importance and order of process.  The authors strongly suggest that self-awareness is the key to this kingdom of emotional intelligence.  The other domains are rooted in and flow out of this sort of mindfulness.  If I am not aware of my own internal state, then I cannot manage that state.  If I cannot get enough distance from myself to observe my own experience, then I am not likely to be able to imagine the internal states of others.  And if I cannot build that empathic bridge, I will have a difficult time managing my relationships--especially in times of stress and conflict.

"In short," write the authors of Primal Leadership, "self-awareness facilitates both empathy and self-management, and these two, in combination, allow effective relationship management.  EI leadership, then, builds up from a foundation of self-management." (page 30)

The reason I returned to this book is because I have been thinking about the vital importance of empathy in my pastoral work, in my leadership roles, in my mediation practice and in my work as a parent educator.  Simon Baron Cohen describes empathy as the most important resource on the planet.  I do not believe he overstates the case.

I wonder how these four leadership competencies are addressed in the formation and training of parish pastors.  In my own experience, there was some (relatively unintentional) integration of these matters in my basic unit of Clinical Pastoral Education.  There was little additional attention paid to them.  I wonder how these are integrated into the screening dimension of the candidacy process.  Pastoral leadership with limited competencies in these areas can be ineffective and sometimes destructive.

What say you, colleague pastors?  How do  these competencies work out in your experiences of leadership and ministry?